Photograph by: Jeff McIntosh
, THE CANADIAN PRESS

From the moment Premier Christy Clark’s odd letter to Premier Alison Redford landed on reporters’ desks in Victoria last week before it was received in Edmonton, the real audience was clear. The letter was in turn condescending, threatening and vague as to its real purpose to the point that aides were dispatched to explain to reporters what Clark meant to say.

So it’s no surprise that both premiers described the meeting on Monday that followed as “frosty.” Clark was speaking to British Columbians and Redford to her own constituents and neither had anything new to say to each other.

Clark’s letter is part of her gradual rewrite of where she and her government have stood on Enbridge’s Northern Gateway Pipeline proposal, starting with the release in late July of her five conditions for the construction of heavy oil pipelines in B.C.

In her speech Friday to the Union of B.C. Municipalities, Clark repeated those conditions and declared that her government has taken a “tough, principled and absolutely consistent stand.” Tough and principled are matters of debate, but “absolutely consistent” is harder to argue.

Consider this response in the legislature in May to a question from NDP leader Adrian Dix on where the government stood on the shipment of oil along the coast.

“I think, though, that the real question that British Columbians need to be asking is: why is it the leader of the Opposition feels he already knows everything about the outcome of these hearings?” Clark shot back. “He has prejudged the outcome.”

“Well, the government of British Columbia has a greater responsibility than that,” she went on. “We need to understand completely the risks to our province and also, potentially, the benefits to our province. We don’t know the outcome of the answer to either of those questions.”

Clark still doesn’t know the answer to either of those questions in any more detail than she did then, or at least that she could have then if she was well briefed. But three months later she was able to state categorically that the risks to the environment in British Columbia outweighed the economic benefits for British Columbians.

The one significant thing that did change in between was the U.S. National Transportation Safety Board’s scathing report on Enbridge’s Kalamazoo River spill, a report that raised substantial questions about whether the company should be trusted, even if the technology is sound, to transport bitumen through the relatively pristine northern wilderness.

That may have been the trigger for the premier’s new-found interest in jumping with at least one foot onto the anti-pipeline band wagon.

Clark put herself in a bind by announcing the government’s opposition at the same time she raised the idea that the risk would be more palatable if B.C. were to get its “fair share” of the proceeds.

What level of risk and how much we should get for it are so far undefined. She must be prepared to accept some level of risk of an oil spill; otherwise there would be no reason for the kind of risk premium Clark is demanding for her support. There has been no suggestion, so far anyway, that the premier is now looking at a similar “fair share” for less risky goods being shipped through the province; no B.C. tax on wheat or widgets, coal or canola oil.

So if Clark is frustrated about the way the media in Alberta has covered her recent messaging on the pipeline by concentrating on the “fair share” aspect, not on her determination to protect the environment, she has only herself to blame. Her claim that “there is no price that we can put on our environment” doesn’t stand up to scrutiny as long as there is a point at which B.C. getting its “fair share” makes it worth accepting the risk of another oil pipeline from Alberta to the coast.

What’s fascinating in all of this is that the Clark-Redford skating match is really just a sideshow. As Redford says, the pipeline is a commercial venture. It faces significant regulatory hurdles and stiff political resistance, most significantly from First Nations along the route. The odds that its success or failure will come down to whether Clark can exact concessions from Redford are slim to nil.

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